


Unfolding

by Snatchfer



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Antarctic Empire, Bad Parent Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF), Brothers, Dysfunctional Family, Early Mornings, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Feels, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt, Hurt TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Hurt/Comfort, I Wrote This In School, Implied/Referenced Child Neglect, Mentioned Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF), Mentioned Wilbur Soot, Mild Language, Older Sibling Wilbur Soot, Rated T for language, Sad TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Sad and Happy, Talking, mostly sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-17 22:54:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28982214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snatchfer/pseuds/Snatchfer
Summary: Techno sighs again, but this time it comes out more like a groan. He rubs his snout. “Look, okay,” he begins, looking like he’s fumbling for words. “I know Phil doesn’t like to talk about this. And I don’t know about the rest of L’manberg…”Tommy blinks, eyes sore under their lids. “They don’t either.”“Okay, but listen. Please.” His hands fold and unfold, like a flower in uncertain sunshine. Fire crackles in the stove. “I have never seen more Wilbur in anyone than you. I see him in you every day.”///Tommy wakes up in Techno's basement missing Wilbur. When does he get his time to grieve?Techno has a conversation with him.
Relationships: Dave | Technoblade & TommyInnit
Comments: 12
Kudos: 296





	Unfolding

**Author's Note:**

> These are just the characters, not the real people! As far as I know, everyone involved in this fic is okay with it. If not, please let me know.
> 
> Not much else to say, so here it is!

Waking is like wading through sloughs of grey. He doesn’t notice it at first; too absorbed in a dream he’s already forgetting, but slowly he starts to hear things that are not from sleep-warm fantasies. By that time, it’s too late, and the dream of sleep has shrivelled into ugly shreds. 

Tommy stares at the ceiling, imagining that he is not awake. Rock, smoothed over from its initial cragginess, looms above him in the dark. It’s nearly impossible to tell what time of day it is, when the outside world is blocked out and all he has for eyes are wilted flower buds. A clock hangs on the wall (Technoblade’s addition, when Tommy had mentioned his predicament), but he cannot bring himself to look at it.

He wants Wilbur.

It’s not the first time he’s felt that thought touch him in grisly places, or the bone deep thrum that makes his limbs go heavy; soaked with grief. The useless disintegration of his mind, as the world seems to dissipate around him, leaving only one gloriously heart stricken sentence behind: _I want Wilbur._

He does not want Ghostbur, whose numb fingers do not stain blue. Who never loses his bleak yellow sweater, which Wilbur grew out of a long time ago (and had told Tommy in confidence that it was rather itchy, in any case), or whose feet sometimes fall through the ground in effort of some dull joke.

He does not particularly want the Wilbur that came with the rugged walls of Pogtopia, either, although he’d settle for less.

He wants Wilbur: strong, capable, never seen without plucking at a guitar. He wants Wilbur with his worn-out coats; his undulating cleverness; with the skin that always cracked over his knuckles, but went warm and rough when he held Tommy, palm to palm. He wants Wilbur, with all of his bracelets of old guitar strings, the worn scruff that hung about his jowls, the teeth of his smile that seemed to reflect his pincer-kindness.

He wants Wilbur, and there’s not much else there is to it. Because he wants Wilbur, but all he has is memories turned sallow with aching, and Ghostbur. Hollow, amenable Ghostbur; Ghostbur with all the memories of a concussed sloth and the personality of a geode turned inside out. 

Before he can commiserate further, a crack of yellow appears on the opposite wall; followed quickly by spills of flickering torchlight, folding easily into the darkness. He feels himself tense, as if to ply sleep further from his groggy mind, but the following relief washes the stirring adrenaline away like the breaking of an ocean wave.

A snout appears where the ceiling had gained a rather fetching hole.

“Tommy?” comes the gruff tone.

“Techno?” Comes the wavering reply. He clears his throat to banish the dry itchiness.

Techno’s beetle-black eyes are hidden by the backlight of stumbling fire, but his tusks gleam like polished wood and work just as well. “We need to talk,” he announces.

Tommy gives a low whine, summoning as much dramatic energy as he can muster (not much, but this is the way that he always remembers Wilbur hiding his hurt when Phil got back from his unending adventures. He hadn’t known it for what it was, at first; too caught up in stories of grandeur and gifted curiosities from far off places. It didn’t take long to figure out, after that first year with no Phil had passed).

“What do we need to talk about?” He complains into the open air. But Techno’s snout has already retreated from the hole in the ceiling, and all that’s left is a torch flame; hidden by stone hewn of rough hands and rougher sentimentality.

He props the ladder up against the wall that leads to the ceiling, and pretends as if he were holding hands with its rungs. He climbs its weighty wooden palms, and follows the scent of juniper tea into the kitchen.

Techno stands over the fireplace, contemplating bottles of dandelion honey in turn as a kettle steams upon a familiar crocheted trivet. Eventually, he puts one back on a shelf too high for Tommy to reach, and goes to the table with the other. Tommy sits at an adjacent chair, closer to the cellar. There’s a wooden plate set there, with a mildly seasoned fried egg cracked over a slab of buttered toast.

“Do you want any?” Mumbles Techno, as he pours a mug for himself. He lifts a spoonful of honey from the bottle and slowly mixes it into the tea.

Tommy takes a bite of toast; slightly burned. He swallows the next bite whole, and doesn’t mention it. He’ll finish it in seconds.

“No thanks,” he replies finally, and then catches himself. _Too sullen._ “It looks like piss.”

Technoblade shrugs, palming the mug after replacing the spoon in the bottle. He sips, spinning the flavour over his tongue. “Tastes like piss, too,” he evaluates agreeably, and takes another mouthful.

Tommy takes the bottle of honey and shoves a spoonful in his mouth, relishing at the look Techno sends his way. He’s never been a huge fan of honey either way, and he’s sure Techno knows that, too. “That’s disgustin’, Tommy.”

“Oh yeah? Fuck you, too!”

“That is… not what I said.”

Tommy shrugs, and takes another mouthful. Techno takes another sip. The honey is sticky and its sweetness decays the longer it sits on his tongue. When he swallows, his teeth are thick with putrid sweetness and an astringent aftertaste. Like an unforgiving rhythm, Tommy takes another mouthful, and Techno takes another sip.

He remembers long days, when he’d wake up in Pogtopia, in a corner where the torches didn’t quite reach and the damp always did. At times, he was worried he’d grow mould on his skin if he stayed too still for too long.

Every morning, in those first few days, Wilbur would stand in the middle of the ravine, and stare into the open crevasse where the sky should have been.

This was before Wilbur had gotten stringently angry, and so on the third day, Tommy decided to ask. _Why do you sit here every morning? What are you doing?_

Wilbur had smiled, with just as many teeth as he needed, and clapped a hand over his shoulder. His hand had been warm, where the corners of darkness were not. His fingers were rough (and on his right hand crooked, from that time he’d punched the wall in anger and Phil had not been there to help fix it), but they were Wilbur’s, so Tommy had been relieved anyway.

_I’m waiting for the sun to rise. It’ll be warm in here, then._

At the time, he’d thought it was one of Wilbur’s poetic diatribes, or an acerbic hope.

Now, he thinks: _if I eat enough honey, will it start to taste better?_

He bounces away from the thought as if it burns him, remembering the sardonic moments as the weeks and months in Pogtopia had gone on. He spits the memory into the ground, and mindlessly takes another awful spoonful.

“So what are we talking about, then? I don’t have all day, you know.” He did, in fact, have all day. 

Techno takes another sip of tea before he speaks, and Tommy is convinced that it must be hot to the point of burning, or else why’d he drink a tea that tastes of piss? Maybe he’s waiting for the tea to taste better, too. Or maybe Phil likes it, and so Techno wants to like it, too.

“L’manberg.” Techno says.

Tommy stabs the honey with the spoon, until the tip scrapes the bottom. It doesn’t make a sound. “What about L’manberg? It’s - fucking - ”

“Your L’manberg doesn’t exist anymore, Tommy.”

“What the fuck are you on about?” He spits, clenching his teeth and not quite knowing why. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about - ” Techno inhales sharply, standing from the table. He’s finished his tea. “I’m talking about what happened in L’manberg yesterday.”

Tommy scowls at the table, drawing figures against the grain with his forefinger. He digs a nail into a gap and pulls splinters of wood from sides. He rubs them against his thumb and then flicks them across the table, and doesn’t bother to keep track of where they land.

Yesterday in L’manberg, huh?

“What about it?”

“Yes, Tommy!” Loud - exasperated, but apparently not angry. “You can’t just go fooling about! They’ll kill you.” He sighs, rubbing a hand down his snout. As if to gather himself. As if Tommy’s somehow in the wrong here. “They’ll kill both of us!”

“No they won’t!” He clenches a fist around the edge of the table, feels the bite of loose wood against the beds of his nails. “They’re my friends!”

“They exiled you!”

“They - !” Whatever words he had fall from his mouth.

Tubbo exiled him. But it’s not like he had any choice, right? What would Dream have done if Tommy hadn’t been exiled? And sure, they definitely could’ve fought their way out - maybe - but at least the worst didn’t happen. Or whatever. Right?

He bites his lip. “Ranboo’s not so bad,” he concludes, quietly. _He came to see me in exile, at least. That’s more than you ever did._ “And Tubbo is my best friend! We - me, ‘nd Fundy, and Tubbo, and - we built L’manberg from the ground up! And Quackity - ”

“They tried to execute me!” Techno bursts, fists blanching at his sides as if to slam onto something, but he thinks better of it at the last second. “They _killed_ me!”

Tommy watches the way Techno’s face goes angry and wrinkly, like a snarl has been caught in his skin. He bears his tusks as if on reflex - as if this is some battle he has to win, and not an argument between him and some sixteen year old kid who just misses home.

Sparks spit in his throat. “And you blew up L’manberg! You destroyed my home!”

“No, Wilbur did that - and he wanted me to summon those Withers. We agreed!”

There’s a loud slam, and the burning pain of heated flesh from violent friction. It takes him a moment to realise he slammed a fist into the table, just as Techno must have wanted to a second ago. “We risked our lives for our freedom and our independence! We built that country from the ground up. Are you telling me - are you really telling me, right fucking now - that Wilbur would’ve wanted that? The real Wilbur!”

He exhales, and all the breath in his body goes with it, in one short, sharp burst.

Techno looks away. His eyes seem to land somewhere distant - maybe back in Pogtopia, those times when Wilbur had been okay. When he hadn’t had that manic spark about him; when his face hadn’t smiled with too many teeth, instead of just enough; when he’d worn leadership and pragmatism like woven cloak about his shoulders, instead of a chain around his neck.

Or maybe he’s further back. Maybe he’s landed somewhere in between adventures with Phil and hours in the library, when they’d battle over board games, or squabble over making tea, or ponder books while Wilbur strummed chords and hummed his latest tune. Maybe he’s in the memory of watching Phil teach Tommy’s first forms in swordfighting, or Wilbur’s.

For all the years that they’ve known each other, there aren’t many more moments Tommy can recall than that. Not with the three of them, and certainly not with all four.

“I don’t know much about that L’manberg…” Techno admits slowly, face stony. “But that is not what it is now. Wilbur could see that just as much as I can.”

The sparks in Tommy’s throat turn to fire. A blaze rises under his skin, steam evaporating fast enough to leave a tight pressure where his larynx should be. He feels like yelling; he feels like wailing.“And what do _you_ know about Wilbur?”

There’s another slam, but this time the pain doesn’t come. He jerks his hands away from the table, which quivers from where Techno had slammed both knotted fists onto its surface, ropes of muscle bulging under the force. His head rings with whirring memories that slide over his vision in a flurry of dazed comparisons.

He feels the air fill his lungs with each breath; the woodsmoke, the juniper tea, the metallic flavour of copper on tongue. The blurry rendition of salt on a bitter breeze, earthy cologne born of sleeping in the dirt. Something acridly green.

He takes another spoonful of honey. It’s almost empty, now.

It tastes disgusting.

When Techno finally speaks, his voice is the texture of wood chopped with a burning axe, or stone under magma. Tommy tastes blood, and realises he bit his tongue. “They exiled you, they executed me. That country drove your brother to insanity, and they have Phil trapped in house arrest.” Techno stands to his full height, eyes cloudy. “They are not my friends, and they are not your friends. They are not _our_ friends.”

“I _built_ that country - we - ”

“What will get it through your head?” Techno spits, and Tommy can’t tell if he’s angry or who at or anything, but the world seems to centre on teeth and tongue and a white-on-black, pale imitation of a smile that doesn’t even exist. “That place is not - ”

“ _We_ built it!” Tommy finds himself repeating, the words blending into his vibrating gums. “Me and Wilbur, and not you!”

Wilbur, with just enough teeth for just enough smile. Wilbur, who only really liked that sweater for its colour, and not for its feel. Wilbur, whose fingers were blunted and rough and warm from long nights with guitar strings and a lifetime of tools meant for people much older.

Wilbur, who is dead.

“You didn’t - didn’t help!” The words catch in his throat. Not from fire or sparks, this time; something rounder. More painful. Wet. Ugly. 

Technoblade sighs. Tommy wishes he could bring himself to look at his face, see the reaction - gauge the damage. Worlds of dread will pass before he can summon the courage to do that. He stares into the almost empty bottle of honey, that glints a burnt orange reminiscent of Autumns long past.

Puddles and dry leaves. Uncut hair and nutty soups. Frosted ground and creaking leather. A song; A minor and A minor seven.

_Maybe one day, I’ll live in La Jolla._

Techno fists the backrest of the chair beneath him. Maybe his teeth clench.

“I… miss him too.”

“Phil killed him.” His voice is as quiet as he can make it. “... Maybe I don’t care that he’s on house arrest.” He does care, but that’s not the point.

Because it feels like a confession. It feels like a putrid brick to spit out; like a gob of fetid smoke or rolled waste to vomit; an admittance. It tastes of uncertainty and fear and everything else he felt in the moment when he watched Wilbur’s body drop to the ground - the one they couldn’t recover after the Withers were done with that crater of a country - and his eyes had rolled but in that moment he’d seemed alive enough to catch Tommy’s gaze. 

In hindsight, he was probably already dead.

He does care about Phil, but that’s not the point.

Because Wilbur is dead. And Phil is on house arrest, and maybe Tommy thinks he deserves it. Maybe he does deserve it.

Water dribbles down his chin, landing in dark spots on the table or falling into the grain. “He was an asshole,” he mumbles, low enough that maybe Techno won’t catch it, or that he’ll at least ignore the cracks in his voice. “Why do I only remember the good parts?”

Their eyes meet; beetle black and crispy blue. The world keeps turning. “Maybe you just miss the good parts the most.” Techno takes a deep breath, but Tommy can’t see past the tears, and he can’t bring himself to brush them away. Maybe if he ignores them, it’ll be like they don’t exist. “Is that what this is about? You think L’manberg is something of Wilbur’s?”

“It’s all I have of Wilbur.”

“That’s not true.”

“Ghostbur isn’t Wilbur!” His voice is shrill. Hopeless; hoping anyway. Techno can see that, right? Phil doesn’t want to talk about it, Phil doesn’t ever want to talk about anything. Some raw ache would sit in the hollow where his mouth opens and closes, wordless. And then he always goes and says the same thing - _he’s still here,_ he’d say. _He’s still with us._

_Why does it matter?_

Techno turns the chair around, so that it’s facing Tommy’s. He takes a seat, hands in his lap, eyes on Tommy’s. Like he means to say something. Like anything he means will mean anything, at all, ever. “I wasn’t meanin’ Ghostbur, Tommy.”

Tommy stares into the warped glass of the empty bottle, scraped clean. Light from the windows shrieks through its rounded surface and bursts out the other side in shards of sun. The glass is round in his palms, almost smooth enough to come off like a flavour. Techno’s workmanship has almost always been like that.

His face feels loose about his skull. It’s an odd sensation. He feels saturated with something watery and heavy.

“What were you meaning, then?”

Techno sighs again, but this time it comes out more like a groan. He rubs his snout. “Look, okay,” he begins, looking like he’s fumbling for words. “I know Phil doesn’t like to talk about this. And I don’t know about the rest of L’manberg…”

Tommy blinks, eyes sore under their lids. “They don’t either.”

“Okay, but listen. Please.” His hands fold and unfold, like a flower in uncertain sunshine. Fire crackles in the stove. “I have never seen more Wilbur in anyone than you. I see him in you every day.”

Tommy feels numb. His head feels full, skull awash with water that might drizzle out of his ears if he’s not careful. 

“You’re so much like him.” Techno’s eyes wander off to the side, as if to remember things Tommy hadn’t ever thought to. Has he been making connections between them this whole time? Suddenly he’s hungry for whatever details Techno can offer him. He wants to be like Wilbur so much it _aches,_ it purges thirst for anything else from his mind. He wants that fragment of him to still exist.

But what does it matter? Techno barely knows him, and he barely knows Wilbur. The most time they ever spent together was in Pogtopia. So why does he care so much about what Techno thinks?

“I’m not Wilbur,” he says, wearily. His voice is raw from nothing much in particular, but his throat still hurts.

“No,” Techno agrees. “You’re his brother.”

“You were supposed to be, too.”

Techno looks away. “I never wanted to be.”

“And Phil was meant to be our Dad.” Tommy continues. “He didn’t want to be, either.”

They stare at the table. Tommy thinks about throwing the goddamn glass honey bottle at the window and listening to the crack and shatter as it breaks across the floor, and maybe the counter too. Thinks about the broken shards of glass and cold light that would drape across the floor, broken. Forever. Unfixable.

“I’m going back to bed,” he mutters.

**Author's Note:**

> I will be getting back to work on my WIP in a second! Not to worry, I just had to get this off my chest.


End file.
